Formative Assessment in LDL Workshop Activities: Engaging Teachers in a Training Program

The pandemic crisis that affected us in December 2019 is still reflected in teacher training. In this article, we describe a teacher-training experiment focused on the use of large-scale assessment in a formative perspective and in a laboratorial distance teaching setting. Between March and May 2020, during the first period of long-distance learning that affected Italy, we implemented a long-distance teacher professional development designed for teachers of all school levels. This training was structured into 16 webinars involving 2539 Italian teachers coming from different geographical areas (north, center and south Italy). At the beginning of the 2020/2021 school year, a follow-up questionnaire was developed and implemented. One of the purposes of this questionnaire was to clarify how this experience impacted teachers’ beliefs and practices. As a result, we find that our long-distance teacher training helped resilient teachers understand the importance of technology and reflect on the importance of formative, not just summative, assessment.